Reeves watches his words

TORONTO -- For the past 12 months, Keanu Reeves has been watching his calendar.

"If it's September that means it's been a year so I can finally talk," says Reeves.

What he wants to talk about is his version of what happened with the movie The Watcher in which he played a psychopath. Reeves did not do publicity for the film and it was clear he was not happy with the project.

"I never found that script interesting, but a friend of mine forged my signature on an agreement.

"I couldn't prove he did and I didn't want to get sued for not honouring the contract so I had no other choice but to do the film."

The indignity didn't stop there.

Reeves was not allowed to say anything negative about the film for one year. If he had, he would've faced a lawsuit.

Reeves flew in to Toronto for the weekend from Australia to help promote his baseball film Hardball which opens Friday.

The film is not part of the Toronto International Film Festival, but this was the only weekend Reeves could spare from the hectic filming the two Matrix sequels.

He says it is difficult for him to talk about the sequels as separate entities though they will be released in 2002 and 2003.

"Right now I simply think of them as one film that will eventually be split into two separate films. We're not filming in any particular order so we're doing them simultaneously."

Reeves had not worked with singer Ayallia who was killed in a plane crash earlier this month. She had been set to appear in the sequels.

"I have no idea what she filmed or what, if anything, will be done with her footage."

In Hardball, Reeves plays a chronic gambler who redeems his life by teaching a little league baseball team in a depressed Chicago inner-city neighborhood.

Reeves is resigned to the fact for years to come he'll be known for his role in the Matrix films but hopes "by the end of my career I'll be defined by five or six films and not just The Matrix."

He wouldn't elaborate as to whether he would like his Bill & Ted movies and Speed to be in that lexicon.